5"/

THE

*

USES OF ASTRONOMY.

OCCASION OF THE INAUGURATION OF THE DUDLEY OD.-K1! YATOKY.

E D W A R D E V E R E T T

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN "AND COMPANY.

1 8 5 G.

THE

USES OF ASTRONOMY.

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT ALBANY ON THE 28TH OP AUGUST, 1856, ON
OCCASION OP THE INAUGURATION OF THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY.

BY

EDWARD E^

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY,

1856,

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CAMBEI DGE :
ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS.

A'

MRS. BLAND IN A DUDLEY,

TO THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE,

TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,

THE CITIZENS OF ALBANY, GENERALLY,

THIS DISCOURSE

DELIVERED ON THEIR INVITATION AND IN THEIR PRESENCE,

AND PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE

INAUGURATION OF THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY, IS, WITH THE BEST WISHES

FOR THE COMPLETE SUCCESS OF THAT NOBLE ENTERPRISE,

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY

EDWARD EVERETT.

Boston, September, 1856.

ORATION.

Fellow-citizens of Albany, —

Assembled as we are under your auspices in this ancient
and hospitable city, for an object indicative of a highly
advanced stage of scientific culture, it is natural in the first
place to cast an historical glance at the past. It seems almost
to surpass belief, though an unquestioned fact, that more than
a century should have passed away, after Cabot had dis-
covered the coast of North America for England, before any
knowledge was gained of the noble river on which your city
stands, and which was destined by Providence to determine in
after-times the position of the commercial metropolis of the
continent. It is true that Verazzano, a bold and sagacious
Florentine navigator in the service of France, had entered the
Narrows in 1524, which he describes as a very large river,
deep at its mouth, which forced its way through steep hills to
the sea. But though he, like most of the naval adventurers
of that age, was sailing westward in search of a shorter pas-
sage to India, he left this part of the coast without any
attempt to ascend the river ; nor can it be gathered from his
narrative that he believed it to penetrate far into the interior.

Near a hundred years elapsed, before that great thought
acquired form and substance. In the Spring of 1609, the

heroic but unfortunate Hudson, one of the brightest names in
the history of English maritime achievement, but then in the
employment of the Dutch East India Company, in a vessel of
eighty tons, bearing the very astronomical name of the
" Half-moon," having been stopped by the ice in the polar sea
in the attempt to reach the East by the way of Nova Zembla,
struck over to the coast of America in a high northern lati-
tude. He then stretched down south-westwardly to the entrance
of Chesapeake Bay, (of which he had gained a knowledge
from the charts and descriptions of his friend, Capt. Smith,)
— thence returning to the North, entered Delaware Bay,-—
standing out again to sea arrived on the 2d of September in
sight of the " high hills " of Neversink, pronouncing it " a
good land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see," and on
the following morning, sending his boat before him to sound
the way, passed Sandy Hook, and there came to anchor, on
the third of September, 1609 ; two hundred and forty-seven
years ago, next Wednesday. What an event, my friends, in
the history of American population, enterprise, commerce,
intelligence, and power, — the dropping of that anchor at
Sandy Hook!

Here he lingered a week, in friendly intercourse with the
natives of New Jersey, while a boat's company explored the
waters up to Newark Bay. And now the great question.
Shall he turn back like Verazzano, or ascend the stream ?
Hudson was of a race and in an employ, not prone to turn
back, by sea or by land. On the 11th of September he raised
the anchor of the " Half-moon," passed through the Narrows,
beholding on both sides " as beautiful a land as one can tread
on ; " and floated cautiously and slowly up the noble stream,
the first ship that ever rested on its bosom. He passed the Pal-
isades, nature's dark basaltic MalakofT; forced the iron gate-
way of the Highlands, and anchored on the 14th, near West
Point ; swept onward and upward the following day by grassy
meadows and tangled slopes, hereafter to be covered with smil-

ing villages ; — by elevated banks and woody heights, the des-
tined site of future towns and cities, — tot egregias urbes. — of
Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Catskih ; — on the evening of the loth
arrived opposite ;i the mountains which lie from the river side,"
where he found " a very loving people and very old men ; "
and the day following reached the spot, hereafter to be hon-
ored by his own illustrious name. One more dav wafts him
up between Schodac and Castleton, and here he landed and
passed a day with the natives, — greeted with all sorts of bar-
barous hospitality, — the land - the finest for cultivation he
ever set foot on," the natives so kind and gentle that, when
they found he would not remain with them over night, and
feared that he left them, — poor children of nature, — because
' he was afraid of their weapons, he, whose quarter-deck was
heavy with ordnance, they " broke their arrows in pieces, and
threw them in the fire." On the following morning, with the
early flood-tide, on the 19th of September, 1609, the Half-
moon " ran higher up two leagues above the Shoals," and
came to anchor in deep water, near the site of the present
city of Albany. Happy, if he could have closed his gallant
career, on the banks of the stream which so justly bears his
name, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious
catastrophe which awaited him in the Arctic waters, the next
year!

But the discovery of your great river and of the site of your
ancient city is not the only event, which renders the year
1609 memorable in the annals of America and the world. It
was one of those years, in which a sort of sympathetic move-
ment toward great results unconsciously pervades the races
and the minds of men. While Hudson was exploring this
mighty river and this vast region for the Dutch East India
Company, Champlain, in the same year, carried the lilies of
France to the beautiful lake which bears his name on your
northern limits : — the languishing establishments of England
in Virginia were strengthened by the second charter granted

8

to that colony ; — the little church of Robinson removed from
Amsterdam to Leyden, from which, in a few years, they went
forth, to lay the foundations of New England on Plymouth
Rock ; — the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, after
that terrific struggle of forty years, (the commencement of
which has just been embalmed by an American historian
in a record worthy of the great event,) wrested from Spain
the virtual acknowledgment of their independence in the
Twelve Years' truce ; — and James the First, in the same year,
granted to the British East India Company their first perma-
nent charter ; corner-stone of an empire destined in two cen-
turies to overshadow the East.

One more incident is wanting to complete the list of the
memorable occurrences which signalize the year 1609, and
one most worthy to be remembered by us on this occasion.
Contemporaneously with the events which I have enumer-
ated, — eras of history, dates of empire, the starting point in
some of the greatest political, social, and moral revolutions in
our annals, an Italian astronomer, who had heard of the mag-
nifying glasses which had been made in Holland by which
distant objects could be brought seemingly near, caught at the
idea, constructed a telescope, and pointed it to the heavens.
Yes, my friends, in the same year in which Hudson discovered
your river and the site of your ancient town, in which Robin-
son made his melancholy Hegira from Amsterdam to Leyden,
Galileo Galilei, with a telescope, the work of his own hands,
discovered the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter ;
and now, after the lapse of less than two centuries and a half,
on a spot then imbosomed in the wilderness, the covert of
some of the least civilized of all the races of men, we are
assembled, descendants of the Hollanders, descendants of
the Pilgrims, in this ancient and prosperous city, to inaugu-
rate the establishment of a first class Astronomical Observa-
tory.

One more glance at your early history. Three years after

the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, (for I delight to trace
these kindly synchronisms,) Fort Orange was erected, in the
centre of what is now the business part of the city of Albany,
and a few years later, the little hamlet of Beverswyck began
to nestle under its walls. Two centuries ago, my Albanian
friends, this very year, your forefathers assembled, not certainly
to inaugurate an observatory, but to lay the foundations of a
new church in the place of the rude cabin which had hitherto
served them in that capacity. It was built at the intersection
of Yonker's and Handelaar's, better known to you as State
and Market streets. Public and private liberality cooperated
in the important work. The authorities at the fort gave
fifteen hundred guilders ; — the Patroon of that early day,
with the liberality coeval with the name and the race, con-
tributed a thousand ; — while the inhabitants, for whose
benefit it was erected, whose numbers were small and their
resources smaller, subscribed twenty beavers, " for the purchase
of an oaken pulpit in Holland." Whether the largest part of
this subscription was bestowed by some liberal benefactress,
tradition has not informed us. It has however informed us,
as I learned a few hours since from Mr. Brodhead, that the
corner-stone of the little church was laid by the Rev. Rutger
Jacobsen ; and that his daughter married Jan Jansen Bleecker,
from whom is lineally descended Mrs. Blandina Bleecker Dud-
ley, to whom we are so largely indebted for this day's celebra-
tion.

Nor is the year 1656 memorable in the annals of Albany
alone. In that same year your imperial metropolis, which
had then recently been incorporated as a city by the name of
New Amsterdam, was first carefully surveyed by official
authority, and found to contain one hundred and twenty
houses and one thousand inhabitants.* In eight years more

* These historical notices, relative to the discovery of the river by Hudson, and
the foundation of Albany, are for the most part abridged from Mr. Brodhead's
excellent history of New York.

2

10

New Netherland becomes New York ; Fort Orange, with its
dependent hamlet, assumes the name of Albany ; — a century
of various fortune succeeds, — the scourge of French and
Indian war is rarely absent from the land, — every shock of
European policy vibrates with electric rapidity across the
Atlantic, but the year 1756 finds a population of three hun-
dred thousand in your growing province. Albany, however,
may still be regarded almost as a frontier settlement. Of the
twelve counties into which the province was divided a hun-
dred years ago, the county of Albany comprehended all that
lay north and west of the city ; and the city itself contained
but about three hundred and fifty houses.

One more century ; another act in the great drama of em-
pire ; another French and Indian war beneath the banners of
England ; a successful revolution, of which some of the most
momentous events occurred within your immediate neighbor-
hood ; a union of States ; a constitution of federal govern-
ment ; your population carried to the St. Lawrence and the
great Lakes, and their waters poured into the Hudson ; your
territory covered with a network of canals and railroads, filled
with life, and action, and power, with all the works of peace-
ful art and prosperous enterprise, with all the institutions
which constitute and advance the civilization of the age,
its population exceeding that of the Union at the date of the
Revolution, your own numbers twice as large as those of
the largest city of that day, you have met together, my
friends, just two hundred years since the erection of the little
church of Beverswyck, to dedicate a noble temple of science,
and to take a becoming public notice of the establishment of
an institution destined, as we trust, to exert a beneficial influ-
ence on the progress of useful knowledge at home and
abroad, and through that on the general cause of civilization.

You will observe that I am careful to say the progress of
science " at home and abroad ; " for the study of astronomy in
this country, like that of many other branches of natural

11

science, has long since, I am happy to add, passed that point
where it is content to repeat the observations and verify the
results of European research. It has boldly and successfully
entered the field of original investigation, discovery, and spec-
ulation ; and there is not now a single department of the
science in which the names of American observers and mathe-
maticians are not cited by our brethren across the water, side
by side with the most eminent of their European contempo-
raries.

This state of things is certainly recent. During the colonial
period, and in the first generation after the Revolution, no de-
partment of science was, for obvious causes, very extensively
cultivated in America, — astronomy perhaps as much as the
kindred branches. The improvement in the quadrant com-
monly known as Hadley's had already been made at Phila-
delphia by Godfrey in the early part of the last century, and
the beautiful invention of the collimating telescope was made
at a later period by Rittenhouse, an astronomer of distin-
guished repute. The transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769
were observed in different parts of the country ; orreries, a
favorite scientific toy in the last century, were constructed in
Philadelphia and Boston; and some respectable scientific
essays are contained and valuable observations are recorded in
the early volumes of the transactions of the Philosophical
Society at Philadelphia and the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences at Boston and Cambridge. But in the absence
of a numerous class of men of science to encourage and aid
each other, in a state of the country as yet too poor to extend
a liberal patronage to the expensive arts, without observatories
and without valuable instruments, little of importance could
be expected in the higher walks of astronomical research.

The greater the credit due for the achievement of an enter-
prise commenced in the early part of the present century, and
which would reflect honor on the science of any country and
any age, I mean the translation and commentary on Laplace's

12

Mecanique Celeste, by Bowditch ; a work whose merit I am
myself wholly unable to appreciate, but which I have been
led to think places the learned translator and commentator on
a level with the ablest astronomers and geometers of the day.
This work may be considered as opening a new era in the
history of American science. The country was still almost
wholly deficient in instrumental power; but the want was
generally felt by men of science, and the public mind in
various parts of the Union began to be turned towards the
means of supplying it. In 1825, President John Quincy
Adams brought the subject of a National Observatory before
congress. Political considerations prevented its being favor-
ably entertained at that time ; and it was not till 1842, and as
an incident of the exploring expedition, that an appropriation
was made for a depot for the charts and instruments of the
navy. On this modest basis has been reared the National
Observatory at Washington ; an institution which has already
taken and fully sustains an honorable position among the
scientific establishments of the age.

Besides the institution at Washington, fifteen or twenty
observatories have, within the last few years, been established
in different parts of the country, some of them on a modest
scale for the gratification of the scientific taste and zeal of
individuals, others on a broad foundation of expense and use-
fulness. In these establishments, public and private, the
means are provided for the highest order of astronomical ob-
servation, research, and instruction. There is already in the
country an amount of instrumental power (to which addition
is constantly making), and of mathematical skill on the part
of our men of science, adequate to a manly competition with
their European contemporaries in astronomy and the branches
of science theoretical and applied connected with it. - The
proceedings of the present meeting of the American Asso-
ciation fully justify this remark. The fruits are already before
the world in the triangulation of several of the States, in the

13

great work of the coast survey, in the numerous scientific sur-
veys of the interior of the continent, in the astronomical
department of the exploring expedition, in the more recent
scientific expedition to Chili ; — in the brilliant hydrographical
labors of the observatory at Washington ; in the published
observations of Washington and Cambridge ; in the general
character of the contents of the journal conducted by the
Nestor of American Science, now in its eighth lustrum, of the
Sidereal Messenger, and the Astronomical Journal ; in the
National Ephemeris ; in the great chronometrical expeditions
to determine the longitude of Cambridge, better ascertained
than that of Paris was till within the last year ; in the prompt
rectification of the errors in the predicted elements of Nep-
tune, in its identification with Lalande's missing star, and in
the calculation of its ephemeris ; in the discovery of the satel-
lite of Neptune, of the eighth satellite of Saturn, and of the
innermost of its rings ; in the establishment, both by obser-
vation and theory, of the non-solid character of Saturn's
rings ; in the recent remarkable speculations on the nature of
the Zodiacal light ; in the separation and measurement of
many double and triple stars, amenable only to superior
instrumental power ; in the immense labor already performed
in preparing Star Catalogues, and in numerous accurate ob-
servations of standard stars ; in the diligent and successful
observation of the meteoric showers ; in an extensive series of
magnetic observations ; in the discovery of an asteroid and
ten or twelve telescopic comets ; in the resolution of nebulae,
which have defied every thing in Europe but Lord Rosse's
great Reflector ; in the application of electricity to the meas-
urement of differences in longitude, in the corrected ascer-
tainment of the velocity of the electro-magnetic fluid, and its
truly wonderful uses in recording astronomical observations.
These are but a portion of the achievements of American as-
tronomical science within fifteen or twenty years, and fully
justify the most sanguine anticipations of its further progress.

14

How far our astronomers may be able to pursue their re-
searches, will depend upon the resources of our public insti-
tutions, and the liberality of wealthy individuals in furnishing
the requisite means. With the exception of the observatories
at Washington and West Point, little can be done or expected
to be done by the government of the Union or the States ;
but in this, as in every thing else connected with the patronage
of art and science, the great dependence, and may I not add
the safe dependence"; as it ever has been, must continue to be
upon the bounty of enlightened, liberal, and public-spirited
individuals.

It is by a signal exercise of this bounty, my friends, that
we are called together to-day. The munificence of several
citizens of this ancient city, among whom the first place is
due to the generous lady, whose name has with great pro-
priety been given to the institution, has furnished the means
for the foundation of the Dudley Observatory at Albany.
On a commanding elevation, on the northern edge of the
city, liberally given for that purpose by the head of a family
(Van Rensselaer) in which the patronage of science is heredi-
tary, a building of ample dimensions has been erected, upon
a plan which combines all the requisites of solidity, conven-
ience, and taste. A large portion of the expense of the
structure has been defrayed by Mrs. Blandina Dudley, to
whose generosity, and that of several other public spirited
individuals, the institution is also indebted for the provision
which has been made for an adequate supply of first-class
instruments, executed and to be executed by the most emi-
nent makers in Europe and America; and which, it is con-
fidently expected, will yield to none of their class in any
observatory in the world.*

With a liberal supply of instrumental power; established

* For this description of the Dudley Observatory, I am indebted to a valuable
article on American Observatories by Professor Loomis in Harper's Magazine for
June, 1856, p. 49.

15

in a community to whose intelligence and generosity its sup-
port may be safely confided, and whose educational institu-
tions are rapidly realizing the conception of a university ;
countenanced by the gentleman who conducts the United
States Coast Survey with such scientific skill and adminis-
trative energy, and by the men of science generally in the
United States ; committed to the immediate supervision of an
astronomer (Dr. B. A. Gould, Jr.), to whose distinguished tal-
ent has been added the advantage of a thorough scientific
education in the most renowned universities of Europe, and
who, as the editor of the American Astronomical Journal, has
shown himself to be fully qualified for the high trust ; — under
these favorable circumstances, the Dudley Observatory at Al-
bany now takes its place among the scientific foundations of
the country and the world.

It is no affected modesty which leads me to express the
regret that this interesting occasion could not have taken
place under somewhat different auspices. I feel that the duty
of addressing this great and enlightened assembly, compris-
ing so much of the intelligence of the community and of
the science of the country, ought to have been elsewhere
assigned ; that it should have devolved upon some one of the
eminent persons, many of whom I see around me, to whom
you have been listening the past week, who as observers and
geometers could have treated the subject with a master's
power ; astronomers, whose telescopes have penetrated the
depths of the heavens, or mathematicians, whose analysis un-
threads the maze of their wondrous mechanism. If, instead
of commanding, as you easily could have done, qualifications
of this kind, your choice has rather fallen on one, making no
pretensions to the honorable name of a man of science, — but
whose delight it has always been to turn aside from the dusty
and thankless paths of active life, for an interval of recreation
in the green fields of sacred nature in all her kingdoms, — it
is, I presume, because you have desired, on an occasion of

16

this kind, necessarily of a popular character, that those views
of the subject should be presented which address themselves
to the general intelligence of the community, and not to its
select scientific circles. For astronomy perhaps to a greater
extent, than any other department of natural science, exhibits
phenomena, which, while they task the highest powers of
philosophical research, are also well adapted to arrest the
attention of minds barely tinctured with scientific culture,
and even to touch the sensibilities of the wholly uninstructed
observer. The profound investigations of the chemist into
the ultimate constitution of material nature, the minute re-
searches of the physiologist into the secrets of animal life,
the transcendental logic of the geometer bristling in a nota-
tion, the very sight of which terrifies the uninitiated, are lost
on the common understanding. But the unspeakable glories
of the rising and the setting sun ; the serene majesty of
the moon, as she walks in full-orbed brightness through the
heavens ; the soft witchery of the morning and the evening
star ; the imperial splendors of the firmament on a bright un-
clouded night; the comet, whose streaming banner floats
over half the sky, — these are objects which charm and aston-
ish alike the philosopher and the peasant; — the mathemati-
cian who weighs the masses and defines the orbits of the
heavenly bodies, and the untutored observer who sees nothing
beyond the images painted upon the eye.

An astronomical observatory, in the general acceptation of
the word, is a building erected for the reception and appro-
priate use of astronomical instruments, and the accommoda-
tion of the men of science employed in making and reducing
observations of the heavenly bodies. These instruments are
mainly of three classes, to which I believe all others of a
strictly astronomical character may be referred.

1st. The instruments, by which the heavens are inspected,
with a view to discover the existence of those celestial bodies
which are not visible to the naked eye, (beyond all compari-

17

son more numerous than those which are,) and to observe the
magnitude, shapes, and other sensible qualities, both of those
which are and those which are not thus visible to the unaided
sight. The instruments of this class are designated by the
general name of Telescope; and are of two kinds; — the re-
fracting telescope, which derives its magnifying power from a
system of convex lenses ; and the reflecting telescope, which
receives the image of the heavenly body upon a concave
mirror.

2d. The second class of instruments consists of those,
which are designed principally to measure the angular dis-
tances of the heavenly bodies from each other, and then time
of passing the meridian. The transit instrument, the merid-
ian circle, the mural circle, the heliometer, and the sextant,
belong to this class. The brilliant discoveries of astronomy
are for the most part made with the first class of instruments ;
— its practical results wrought out by the second.

3d. The third class contains the clock, with its subsidiary
apparatus for measuring the time and marking its subdi-
visions, with the greatest possible accuracy ; — indispensable
auxiliary of all the instruments, by which the positions and
motions of the heavenly bodies are observed, and measured,
and recorded.

The telescope may be likened to a wondrous Cyclopean
eye, endued with superhuman power, by which the astron-
omer extends the reach of his vision to the further heavens,
and surveys galaxies and universes compared with which the
solar system is but an atom floating in the air. The transit
may be compared to a measuring rod which he lays from
planet to planet and from star to star, to ascertain and mark
off the heavenly spaces, and transfer them to his note-book.
The clock is the marvellous apparatus by which he equalizes
and divides into nicely measured parts a portion of that un-
conceived infinity of duration, without beginning and without

3

18

end, in which all existence floats as on a shoreless and bottom-
less sea.

In the contrivance and the execution of these instruments,
the utmost stretch of inventive skill and mechanical ingenu-
ity has been put forth. To such perfection have they been
carried, that a single second of magnitude or space is ren-
dered a distinctly visible and appreciable quantity. " The
arc of a circle," says Sir J. Herschell, " subtended by one sec-
ond, is less than the two hundred thousandth part of the
radius, so that on a circle of six feet in diameter, it would
occupy no greater linear extent than 5,^ part of an inch ; a
quantity requiring a powerful microscope to be discerned at
all."* The largest body in our system, the sun, whose real
diameter is 882,000 miles subtends, at a distance of 95,000,000
miles, but an angle of a little more than 32r ; while so ad-
mirably are the best instruments constructed, that both in
Europe and America a satellite of Neptune, an object of com-
paratively inconsiderable diameter, has been discovered at a
distance of 2,850 millions of miles.

The object of an Observatory, erected and supplied with
instruments of this admirable construction and at proportion-
ate expense, is, as I have already intimated, to provide for an
accurate and systematic survey of the heavenly bodies, with
a view to a more correct and extensive acquaintance with
those already known, and as instrumental power and skill in
using it increase, to the discovery of bodies hitherto invisible,
and in both classes of objects to the determination of their
distances, their times of passing the meridian, their relations
to each other, and the laws which govern their movements.

Why should we wish to obtain this knowledge ? What
inducement is there to expend large sums of money in the
erection of Observatories, in furnishing them with costly in-

* Herschell's Outlines of Astronomy, § 131.

19

struments, and in the support of the men of science employed
in making, discussing, and recording, for successive genera-
tions, these minute observations of the heavenly bodies ?

In an exclusively scientific treatment of this subject, an
inquiry into its utilitarian relations would be superfluous, —
even wearisome. But on an occasion like the present, you
will not, perhaps, think it out of place, if I briefly answer the
question what is the use of an astronomical observatory, and
what benefit may be expected from the operations of such an
establishment in a community like ours ?

I. In the first place, then, we derive from the observations
of the heavenly bodies which are made at an observatory,
our only adequate measures of time and our only means of
comparing the time of one place with the time of another.
Our artificial timekeepers — clocks, watches, and chronome-
ters — however ingeniously contrived and admirably fabri-
cated, are but a transcript, so to say, of the celestial motions,
and would be of no value without the means of regulating
them by observation. It is impossible for them under any
circumstances to escape the imperfection of all machinery,
the work of human hands ; — and the moment we remove
with our timekeeper east or west, it fails us. It will keep
home time alone, like the fond traveller who leaves his heart
behind him. The artificial instrument is of incalculable
utility, but must itself be regulated by the eternal clock-work
of the skies.

This single consideration is sufficient to show how com-
pletely the daily business of life is affected and controlled by
the heavenly bodies. It is they and not our main-springs, our
expansion balances, and our compensation pendulums, which
give us our time. To reverse the line of Pope, —

'T is with our watches as our judgments ; none
Go just alike, but each believes his own ; —

But for all the kindreds and tribes and tongues of men, —

20

each upon their own meridian, — from the Arctic pole to the
equator, from the equator to the Antarctic pole, the eternal
sun strikes twelve at noon, and the glorious constellations, far
up in the everlasting belfries of the skies, chime twelve at
midnight; — twelve for the pale student over his flickering
lamp, twelve amid the flaming wonders of Orion's belt, if he
crosses the meridian at that fated hour ; — twelve by the
weary couch of languishing humanity, twelve in the star-
paved courts of the Empyrean ; — twelve for the heaving tides
of the ocean ; twelve for the weary arm of labor ; twelve for
the toiling brain ; twelve for the watching, waking, broken
heart ; twelve for the meteor which blazes for a moment and
expires ; twelve for the comet whose period is measured by
centuries ; twelve for every substantial, for every imaginary
thing, which exists in the sense, the intellect, or the fancy,
and which the speech or thought of man, at the given merid-
ian, refers to the lapse of time.

Not only do we resort to the observation of the heavenly
bodies for the means of regulating and rectifying our clocks,
but the great divisions of day and month and year are derived
from the same source. By the constitution of our nature the
elements of our existence are closely connected with the celes-
tial times. Partly by his physical organization, partly by the
habit, — second nature, — of the race from the dawn of crea-
tion, man as he is and the times and seasons of the heavenly
bodies are part and parcel of one system. The first great
division of time, the day-night (nychthemerum), for which we
have no precise synonym in our language, with its primal
alternation of waking and sleeping, of labor and rest, is a
vital condition of the existence of such a creature as man.
The revolution of the year, with its various incidents of sum-
mer and winter and seed-time and harvest, is not less involved
in all our social material and moral progress. It is true that
at the poles and on the equator, the effects of these revolu-
tions are variously modified or wholly disappear, but as the

21

necessary consequence, human life is extinguished at the
poles, and on the equator attains only a languid or feverish
development.* Those latitudes only, in which the great mo-
tions and cardinal positions of the earth exert a mean influ-
ence, exhibit man in the harmonious expansion of his powers.
The lunar period, which lies at the foundation of the month,
is less vitally connected with human existence and develop-
ment ; but is proved by the experience of every age and race
to be eminently conducive to the progress of civilization and
culture.

But indispensable as are these heavenly measures of time
to our life and progress, and obvious as are the phenomena
on which they rest, yet, owing to the circumstance that, in
the economy of nature, the day, the month, and the year are
not exactly commensurable, some of the most difficult ques-
tions in practical astronomy are those, by which an accurate
division of time, applicable to the various uses of man, is
derived from the observation of the heavenly bodies. I have
no doubt that, to the Supreme Intelligence which created and
rules the universe, there is a harmony hidden to us in the
numerical relation to each other of days, months, and years ;
but in our ignorance of that harmony, their practical ad-
justment to each other is a work of difficulty. The great
embarrassment which attended the reformation of the calen-
dar, after the error of the Julian period had, in the lapse of
centuries, reached ten (or rather twelve) days, sufficiently
illustrates this remark. It is most true that scientific difficul-
ties did not form the chief obstacle. Having been proposed
under the auspices of the Roman Pontiff, the protestant world,
for a century and more, rejected the new style. It was in
various places the subject of controversy, collision, and blood-
shed, f It was not adopted in England till nearly two cen-

* Guyot, Earth and Man, p. 231 et seq.
t Stern's Himmelskunde, p. 72.

22

turies after its introduction at Rome ; and in the country of
the Struves and the Pulkova equatorial, they persist at the
present day, for civil purposes, in adding eleven minutes and
twelve seconds to the length of the tropical year.

II. The second great practical use of an Astronomical Ob-
servatory is connected with the science of Geography. The
first page of the history of our continent illustrates this con-
nection. Profound meditation on the sphericity of the earth
was one of the main reasons which led Columbus to under-
take his momentous voyage, and his thorough acquaintance
with the astronomical science of that day was, in his own
judgment, what enabled him to overcome the almost innu-
merable obstacles which attended its prosecution.* In return,
I find that Copernicus, in the very commencement of his im-
mortal work,f appeals to the discovery of America as com-
pleting the demonstration of the sphericity of the earth.
Much of our knowledge of the figure, size, density, and po-
sition of the earth as a member of the solar system is
derived from this science, and it furnishes us the means of
performing the most important operations of practical geog-
raphy. Latitude and longitude, which lie at the basis of all
descriptive geography, are determined by observation. No
map deserves the name, on which the position of important
points has not been astronomically determined. Some even
of our most important political and administrative arrange-
ments depend upon the cooperation of this science. Among
these I may mention the land-system of the United States,
and the determination of the boundaries of the country.

I believe that till it was done by the Federal Government,
a uniform system of mathematical survey had never in any
country been applied to an extensive territory. Large grants
and sales of public land took place before the Revolution and

* Humboldt, Histoire de la geographie, etc. Tom. I. p. 17.
f Copernicus de Eevolutionibus orbium coelestium, Fol. 2.

23

in the interval between the peace and the adoption of the
Constitution ; but the limits of these grants and sales were
ascertained by sensible objects, by trees, streams, rocks, hills,
and by reference to adjacent portions of territory, previously
surveyed. The uncertainty of boundaries thus denned was a
never-failing source of litigation. Large tracts of land in the
Western country granted by Virginia, under this old system
of special and local survey, were covered with conflicting
claims, and the controversies to which they gave rise formed
no small part of the business of the Federal Court after its
organization. But the adoption of the present land-system
brought order out of chaos. The entire public domain is now
scientifically surveyed before it is offered for sale ; it is laid
off into ranges, townships, sections, and smaller divisions with
unerring accuracy, resting on the foundation of base and me-
ridian lines ; — and I have been informed that under this
system, scarce a case of contested location and boundary has
ever presented itself in court. The general land-office con-
tains maps and plans, in which every quarter-section of the
public land is laid down with mathematical precision. The
superficies of half a continent is thus transferred in miniature
to the bureaus at Washington; — while the local land-offices
contain transcripts of these plans, copies of which are fur-
nished to the individual purchaser. When we consider the
tide of population annually flowing into the public domain,
and the immense importance of its efficient and economical
administration, the utility of this application of astronomy
will be duly estimated.*

I will here venture to repeat an anecdote which I heard
lately from a son of the late Hon. Timothy Pickering. Mr.
Octavius Pickering, on behalf of his father,, had applied to
Mr. David Putnam of Marietta, to act as his legal adviser,

* See an article on the Public Lands by the author of this Address, American
Almanac for 1832, p. 145.

24

with respect to certain land claims in the Virginia military
district, in the State of Ohio. Mr. Putnam declined the
agency. He had had much to do with business of that kind
and found it beset with endless litigation. " I have never," he
adds, " succeeded but in a single case, and that was a location
and survey made by General Washington before the Revolu-
tion, and I am not acquainted with any surveys, except those
made by him, but what have been litigated."

At this moment, a most important survey of the coast of the
United States is in progress ; an operation of the utmost con-
sequence, in reference to the geography, commerce, navigation,
and hydrography of the country. The entire work, I need
scarce say, is one of practical astronomy. The scientific
establishment which we this day inaugurate is looked to for
important cooperation in this great undertaking ; — and will
no doubt contribute efficiently to its prosecution.

Astronomical observation furnishes by far the best means of
defining the boundaries of States, when the lines are of great
length and run through unsettled countries. Natural indica-
tions like rivers and mountains, however distinct in appear-
ances, are in practice subject to unavoidable error. By the
treaty of 1783, a boundary was established between the United
States and Great Britain, depending partly on the course of
rivers, and upon the highlands dividing the waters which flow
into the Atlantic Ocean from those which flow into the St.
Lawrence. It took twenty years to find out which river was
the true St. Croix, that being the starting point. England
then having made the extraordinary discovery that the Bay of
Fundy is not a part of the Atlantic Ocean, forty years more
were passed in the unsuccessful attempt to re-create the High-
lands which this strange doctrine had annihilated ; and just
as the two countries were on the verge of a war, the contro-
versy was settled by compromise. Had the boundary been
accurately described by lines of latitude and longitude, no dis-
pute could have arisen. No dispute arose as to the boundary

25

between the United States and Spain, and her successor,
Mexico, where it runs through untrodden deserts, and over
pathless mountains, along the forty-second degree of latitude.
The identity of rivers may be disputed as in the case of the
St. Croix ; the course of mountain chains is too broad for a
dividing line ; the division of streams, as experience has
shown, is uncertain, but a degree of latitude is written on the
heavenly sphere ; and nothing but an observation is required
to read the record.

But scientific elements, like sharp instruments, must be
handled with care. A part of our boundary between the
British Provinces ran upon the forty-fifth degree of latitude ;
and about forty years ago, an expensive fortress was com-
menced by the government of the United States at Rouse's
Point, on Lake Champlain, on a spot intended to be just
within our limits. When the line came to be more carefully
surveyed the fortress turned out to be on the wrong side ; we
had been building an expensive fortification for our neighbor.
But in the general compromises of the Treaty of Washington
by the Webster and Ashburton Treaty of the 9th of August,
1842, the fortress was left within our limits.*

Errors still more serious had nearly resulted a few years
since in a war with Mexico. By the treaty of Guadalupe Hi-
dalgo, of the 2d of February, 1848, the boundary line between
the United States and that country was in part described by
reference to the town of El Paso, as laid down on a speci-
fied map of the United States, of which a copy was appended
to the treaty. This boundary was to be surveyed and run
by a joint commission of men of science. It soon appeared
that errors of two or three degrees existed in the projection of
the map. Its lines of latitude and longitude did not conform
to the topography of the region ; so that it was impossible to
execute the text of the treaty. The famous Mesilla Valley

* Webster's Works, Vol. I. pp. 110, 115.

4

26

was a part of the debatable ground, and the sum of ten mill-
ions of dollars paid to the Mexican government, for that and
for an additional strip of territory on the south-west, was the
smart-money, which expiated the inaccuracy of the map ; the
necessary result perhaps of the want of good materials for its
construction. Ten millions of dollars would have gone a
good way toward the expense of a National Observatory and
of a map of the continent, constructed with entire accuracy.

It became my official duty, in London, a few years ago, to
apply to the British government for an authentic statement of
their claim to jurisdiction over New Zealand. The official
Gazette for the 2d of October, 1840, was sent me from the
Foreign office, as affording the desired information. This num-
ber of the Gazette contained the proclamations issued by the
lieutenant-governor of New Zealand " in pursuance of the
instructions he received from the Marquess of Normanby, one
of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State," asserting the
jurisdiction of his government over the islands of New Zealand,
and declaring them to extend " from thirty-four degrees thirty
minutes north, to forty-seven degrees ten minutes south lati-
tude." It is scarcely necessary to say, that south latitude
was intended in both instances. This error of sixty-nine
degrees of latitude, which would have extended the claim of
British jurisdiction over the whole breadth of the Pacific, had
apparently escaped the notice of that government.

It would be easy to multiply illustrations of the great prac-
tical importance of accurate scientific designations drawn
from astronomical observation, in various relations connected
with boundaries, surveys, and other geographical purposes ;
but I must hasten to

III. A third important department, in which the services
rendered by astronomy are equally conspicuous. I refer to
commerce and navigation. It is chiefly owing-. to the results
of astronomical observation, that modern commerce has at-
tained such a vast expansion, compared with that of the

27

ancient world. I have already reminded you that accurate
astronomical notions contributed materially to the conception
in the mind of Colambus of his immortal enterprise, and to
the practical success with which it was conducted. It was
mainly his skill in the use of astronomical instruments, imper-
fect as they were, which enabled him, in spite of the bewil-
dering variations of the compass, to find his way across the
ocean.

With the progress of the true system of the universe
towards general adoption, the problem of finding the longi-
tude at sea presented itself. This was the avowed object of
the foundation of the Observatory at Greenwich,* and no one
subject has received more of the attention of astronomers
than those investigations of the lunar theory, on which the
requisite tables of the navigator are founded. The pathways
of the ocean are marked out in the sky above. The eternal
lights of the heavens are the only Pharos whose beams never
fail ; which no tempest can shake from its foundation.
Within my recollection, it was deemed a necessary qualifica-
tion for the master and the mate of a merchant-ship, and
even for a prime hand, to be able to " work a lunar," as it was
called.f The improvements in the chronometer have in prac-

=* Grant's History of Physical Astronomy, p. 460.

t The following amusing anecdote is found in Baron Zach's Correspondence Astro-
nomique,Yo\. IV. p. 62. It is a part of the Baron's account of his visit to Cleopatra's
Barge, winch entered the harbor of Genoa in 1817. The Baron was told by the pro-
prietor and commander of the vessel, that his black cook could find the ship's longi-
tude by observation. " ' There he is/ said the young man, pointing to a negro at
the stern of the vessel, in his white apron, with a fowl in one hand, and a dressing-
knife in the other. ' Come here, John, cried the captain, this gentleman is sur-
prised at your calculating the longitude ; tell him about it. Zaeli. What method do
you employ in calculating the longitude by lunar distances ? The Cook. It is indiffer-
ent to me. I make. use of the method of Maskelyne, Lyons, of Witchell, and of
Bowditch ; but I prefer Dunthorne, with which I am more familiar and which is
shorter.' I could not express my surprise at language like this from a black cook,
with a bleeding fowl in one hand, and a larding-knife in the other."

Dr. Bowditch in early life was supercargo of a vessel trading to the East. His

28

tice, to a great extent, superseded this laborious operation, but
Observation remains, and unquestionably will for ever remain,
the only dependence for ascertaining the ship's time and
deducing the longitude from the comparison of that time with
the chronometer.

It may perhaps be thought that astronomical science is
brought already to such a state of perfection, that nothing
more is to be desired, or at least that nothing more is attain-
able in reference to such practical applications as I have
described. This, however, is an idea which generous minds
will reject, in this as in every other department of human
knowledge. In astronomy, as in every thing else, the discov-
eries already made, theoretical or practical, instead of exhaust-
ing the science, or putting a limit to its advancement, do but
furnish the means and instruments of further progress. I
have no doubt we live on the verge of discoveries and inven-
tions in every department, as brilliant as any that have ever
been made ; that there are new truths, new facts ready to
start into recognition on every side ; and it seems to me there
never was an age since the dawn of time, when men ought to
be less disposed to rest satisfied with the progress already
made, than the age in which we live ; for there never was an
age more distinguished for ingenious research, for novel result,
and bold generalization.

That no further improvement is desirable in the means and
methods of ascertaining the ship's place at sea, no one I
think will from experience be disposed to assert. The last

captain, being asked, on one occasion, at Manilla, how he had contrived to find his
way, in the face of a north-east monsoon, by mere dead reckoning-, replied, " that he
had a crew of twelve men, every one of whom could take and work a lunar obser-
vation as well, for all practical purposes, as Sir Isaac Newton himself, were he alive."
During this conversation, Dr. Bowditch sat, " as modest as a maid, saying not a word,
but holding his slate pencil in his mouth," while another person remarked that,
"there was more knowledge of navigation on board that ship, than there was in all
the vessels that have floated in Manilla bay." — Memoir of Dr. Bowditch, by
Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch, p. 29.

29

time I crossed the Atlantic I walked the quarter-deck with the
officer in charge of the noble vessel, on one occasion, when we
were driving along before a leading breeze and under a head
of steam, beneath a starless sky at midnight, at the rate cer-
tainly of ten or eleven miles an hour. There is something
sublime, but approaching the terrible, in such a scene; — the
rayless gloom, the midnight chill, the awful swell of the
deep, the dismal moan of the wind through the rigging,
the all but volcanic fires within the hold of the ship ; — I
scarce know an occasion in ordinary life in which a reflecting
mind feels more keenly its hopeless dependence on irrational
forces beyond its own control. I asked my companion how
nearly he could determine his ship's place at sea under favor-
able circumstances. Theoretically, he answered, I think,
within a mile ; practically and usually within three or four.
My next question was, How near do you think we may be to
Cape Race ? — that dangerous headland which pushes its
iron-bound unlighted bastions from the shore of Newfound-
land far into the Atlantic, — first land-fall to the homeward-
bound American vessel.* We must, said he, by our last obser-
vations and reckoning, be within three or four miles of Cape
Race. A comparison of these two remarks, under the cir-
cumstances in which we were placed at the moment, brought
my mind to the conclusion, that it is greatly to be wished
that the means should be discovered of finding the ship's
place more accurately, or that navigators would give Cape
Race a little wider berth. Still I do not remember that one
of the steam-packets between England and America was ever
lost upon that formidable point.

It appears to me by no means unlikely that, with the im-
provement of instrumental power, and of the means of ascer-
taining the ship's time with exactness, as great an advance

* Since the voyage in question was made (in 1845), a light-house has been built
on Cape Race.

30

beyond the present state of art and science in finding a ship's
place at sea may take place, as was effected by the invention
of the reflecting quadrant, the calculation of lunar tables, and
the improved construction of chronometers.

In the wonderful versatility of the human mind, the im-
provement, when it takes place, will very probably be made
by paths where it is least expected. The great inducement of
Mr. Babbage to attempt the construction of an engine, by
which astronomical tables could be calculated, and even
printed, by mechanical means and with entire accuracy, was
the errors in the requisite tables. Nineteen such errors, in
point of fact, were discovered in an edition of Taylor's loga-
rithms printed in 1796 ; some of which might have led to
the most dangerous results in calculating a ship's place.
These nineteen errors (of which one only was an error of the
press) were pointed out in the Nautical Almanac for 1832.
In one of these errata the seat of the error was stated to be
in cosine of 14° 18' 3". Subsequent examination showed
that there was an error of one second in this correction, and
accordingly in the Nautical Almanac of the next year a new
correction was necessary. But in making the new correction
of one second, a new error was committed of ten degrees.
Instead of cosine 14° 18' 2", the correction was printed cosine
4° 18' 2", making it still necessary, in some future edition of
the Nautical Almanac, to insert an erratum in an erratum of
the errata in Taylor's logarithms.*

In the hope of obviating the possibility of such errors, Mr.
Babbage projected his calculating, or, as he prefers to call it,
his difference machine. Although this extraordinary under-
taking has been arrested in consequence of the enormous
expense attending its execution, enough has been achieved to
show the mechanical possibility of constructing an engine of
this kind, and even one of far higher powers, of which Mr.

* Edinburgh Review, Vol. LIX. p. 282.

31

Babbage has matured the conception, devised the notation,
and executed in part the drawings, — themselves an imperish-
able monument of the genius of the author.

I happened on one occasion to be in company with this
highly distinguished man of science, whose social qualities
are as pleasing as his constructive talent is marvellous, when
another eminent savant, Count Strzelecki, just returned from
his Oriental and Australian tour, observed that he found
among the Chinese a great desire to know something more of
Mr. Babbage's calculating machine, and especially whether
like their own sivanpan it could be made to go into the pocket.
Mr. Babbage good-humoredly observed that thus far he had
been very much out of pocket with it.

Whatever advances may be made in astronomical science,
theoretical or applied, I am strongly inclined to think that
they will be made in connection with an increased command
of instrumental power. The natural order in which the
human mind proceeds in the acquisition of astronomical
knowledge, is minute and accurate observation of the phe-
nomena of the heavens, the skilful discussion and analysis of
these observations, and sound philosophy in generalizing the
results.

In pursuing this course, however, a difficulty presented itself,
which for ages proved insuperable, and which to the same ex-
tent has existed in no other science, namely, that all the lead-
ing phenomena are in their appearance delusive. It is indeed
true that in all sciences, superficial observation can only lead,
except by chance, to superficial knowledge ; but I know of no
branch in which, to the same degree as in astronomy, the
great leading phenomena are the reverse of true, while they
yet appeal so strongly to the senses, that sagacious philos-
ophers in antiquity who could foretell eclipses, and who dis-
covered the precession of the equinoxes, still believed that the
earth was at rest in the centre of the universe, and that all the

32

hosts of heaven performed a daily revolution about it as a
centre.

It usually happens in scientific progress, that when a great
fact is at length discovered, it approves itself at once to all
competent judges. It furnishes a solution to so many problems
and harmonizes with so many other facts, that all the other
data, as it were, crystallize at once about it. In modern times
we have often witnessed such an impatience, so to say, of
great truths to be discovered, that it has frequently happened
that they have been found out simultaneously by more than
one individual. A disputed question of priority is an event
of very common occurrence. Not so with the true theory
of the heavens. So complete is the deception practised on
the senses, that it failed more than once to yield to the an-
nouncement of the truth ; and it was only when the visual
organs were armed with an almost preternatural instrumental
power, that the great fact found admission to the human
mind.

It is supposed that in the very infancy of science, Pythag-
oras or his disciples explained the apparent motion of the
heavenly bodies about the earth, by the diurnal revolution of
the earth on its axis. But this theory, though bearing so
deeply impressed upon it the great seal of truth, simplicity,
was in such glaring contrast with the evidence of the senses,
that it failed of acceptance in antiquity or the middle ages.
It found no favor with minds like those of Aristotle, Archim-
edes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, or any of the acute and learned
Arabian or mediaeval astronomers. All then ingenuity and
all their mathematical skill were exhausted in the devel-
opment of a wonderfully complicated and ingenious but
erroneous theory. The great master truth, rejected for its
simplicity, lay, disregarded, at their feet.

At the second dawn of science, the great fact again beamed
into the mind of Copernicus. Now, at least, in that glorious
age which witnessed the invention of printing, the great

33

mechanical engine of intellectual progress, and the discovery
of America, we may expect that this long-hidden revelation, a
second time proclaimed, will command the assent of man-
kind. But the sensible phenomena were still too strong for
the theory; — the glorious delusion of the rising and the set-
ting sun could not be overcome. Tycho de Brahe furnished
his observatory with instruments superior in number and
quality to all that had been collected before ; but the great
instrument of discovery, which, by augmenting the optic
power of the eye, enables it to penetrate beyond the appar-
ent phenomena and to discern the true constitution of the
heavenly bodies, was wanting at Uranienburg. The observa-
tions of Tycho, as discussed by Keppler, conducted that most
fervid, powerful, and sagacious mind to the discovery of some
of the most important laws of the celestial motions ; but it
was not till Galileo, at Florence, had pointed his telescope
to the sky, that the Copernican system could be said to be
firmly established in the scientific world.*

On this great name, my friends, assembled as we are to
dedicate a temple to instrumental Astronomy, we may well
pause for a moment.

There is much, in every way, in the city of Florence to
excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify
the taste. Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of
Fiesole, whose Cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary
to ages before the Roman, before the Etruscan power, the
flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno
with its stately palaces. Dark and frowning piles of me-
diaeval structure, a majestic dome the prototype of St. Peter's,
basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest
of the dead, the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the cam-

* It is another interesting coincidence of events in the year 1609, that Keppler's
works de Motu Mortis and Astronomia Nova, in which his two first laws are pro-
pounded, appeared in this year. I am indebted for this suggestion to Dr. B. A.
Gould, Jun.

5

34

panile, the house of Michael Angelo still occupied by a de-
scendant of his lineage and name, — his hammer, his chisel, his
dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but
yesterday ; — airy bridges which seem not so much to rest on
the earth as to hover over the waters they span ; — the love-
liest creations of ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages
again to "enchant the world;" — the breathing marbles of
Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and Titian ;

— museums filled with medals and coins of every age from
Cyrus the younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the
sepulchres of Egyptian Pharoahs coeval with Joseph, and
Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy before the Romans; —
libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient literature;

— gardens of rose and orange and pomegranate and myrtle ;

— the very air you breathe languid with music and perfume, —
such is Florence. But among all its fascinations addressed
to the sense, the memory, and the heart, there was none to
which I more frequently gave a meditative hour during a
year's residence, than to the spot where Galileo Galilei sleeps
beneath the marble floor of Santa Croce ; no building on
which I gazed with greater reverence, than I did upon the
modest mansion at Arcetri, villa at once and prison, in which
that venerable sage, by command of the Inquisition, passed
the sad closing years of his life; — the beloved daughter on
whom he had depended to smoothe his passage to the grave
laid there before him ; the eyes with which he had discovered
worlds before unknown, quenched in blindness : —

Ahime ! quegli occhi si son fatti oscuri,
Che vider piu di tutti i tempi antichi,
E luce fur dei secoli futuri.

That was the house " where," says Milton, (another of
those of whom the world was not worthy,) " I found and
visited the famous Galileo, grown old, — a prisoner to the

35

Inquisition, for thinking on astronomy, otherwise than as
the Dominican and Franciscan licensers thought." * Great
heavens! what a tribunal, what a culprit, what a crime!
Let us thank God, my friends, that we live in the nineteenth
century. Of all the wonders of ancient and modern art,
statues and paintings, and jewels and manuscripts, the admi-
ration and the delight of ages, — there was nothing which I
beheld with more affectionate awe, than that poor rough tube,
a few feet in length, the work of his own hands, that very
" optic glass " through which the " Tuscan Artist " viewed
the moon,

" At evening from the top of Fesole
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Eivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe : "

that poor little spy-glass (for it is scarcely more) through
which the human eye first distinctly beheld the surface of the
moon, — first discovered the phases of Venus, the satellites of
Jupiter, and the seeming handles of Saturn, — first penetrated
the dusky depths of the heavens, — first pierced the clouds of
visual error, which from the creation of the world involved
the system of the Universe.

There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives
years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emo-
tions of Galileo, when, first raising the newly constructed
telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy
of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the
moon. It was such another moment as that when the im-
mortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy
of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine Art ; —
like that when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th
October, 1492,' (Copernicus, at the age of eighteen, was then

* Milton's Prose Works, Vol. I. p. 313.

36

a student at Cracow,) * beheld the shores of San Salvador ; —
like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to
the intellect of Newton ; — like that when Franklin saw by the
stiffening fibres of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held
the lightning in his grasp ; — like that when Leverrier received
back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was
found.

Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right, E pur si muove. " It does
move." Bigots may make thee recant it ; but it moves never-
theless. Yes, the earth moves, and the planets move, and
the mighty waters move, and the great sweeping tides of air
move, and the empires of men move, — and the world of
thought moves, ever onward and upward to higher facts and
bolder theories. The Inquisition may seal thy lips, but they
can no more stop the progress of the great truth propounded
by Copernicus and demonstrated by thee, than they can stop
the revolving earth.

Close now, venerable sage, that sightless, tearful eye ; it
has seen what man never before saw ; — it has seen enough.
Hang up that poor little spy-glass ; it has done its work. Not
Herschell nor Rosse has comparatively done more. Fran-
ciscans and Dominicans deride thy discoveries now, but the
time will come when from two hundred observatories in Eu-
rope and America the glorious artillery of science shall nightly
assault the skies, but they shall gain no conquests in those
glittering fields before which thine shall be forgotten. Rest
in peace, great Columbus of the heavens, like him scorned,
persecuted, broken-hearted ; in other ages, in distant hemi-
spheres, when the votaries of science, with solemn acts of con-
secration, shall dedicate their stately edifices to the cause of
knowledge and truth, thy name shall be mentioned with
honor !

It is not my intention, in dwelling with such emphasis

* Kopernik et ses Travaux, par Jean Czynski, p. 29.

37

upon the invention of the telescope, to ascribe undue impor-
tance, in promoting the advancement of science, to the in-
crease of instrumental power. Too much, indeed, cannot be
said of the service rendered by its first application in confirm-
ing and bringing into general repute the Copernican system ;
but for a considerable time, little more was effected by the
wondrous instrument, than the gratification of curiosity and
taste by the inspection of the planetary phases, and the addi-
tion of the rings and satellites of Saturn to the solar family.
Newton, prematurely despairing of any further improvement
in the refracting telescope, applied the principle of reflection,
and the nicer observations now made, no doubt hastened the
maturity of his great discovery of the law of gravitation ;
but that discovery was the work of his transcendent genius
and consummate skill.

With Bradley in 1741, a new period commenced in instru-
mental astronomy, not so much of discovery as of measure-
ment.* The superior accuracy and minuteness, with which
the motions and distances of the heavenly bodies were now
observed, resulted in the accumulation of a mass of new
materials both for tabular comparison and theoretical specu-
lation. These materials formed the enlarged basis of astro-
nomical science between Newton and Sir William Herschell.
His gigantic reflectors introduced the astronomer to regions
of space before un visited, extended beyond all previous con-
ception the range of the observed phenomena, and with it
proportionably enlarged the range of constructive theory.
The discovery of a new primary planet and its attend-
ant satellites was but the first step of his progress into the
labyrinth of the heavens. Contemporaneously with his ob-

■* Dr. Bowditch in his admirable article in the North American Review, Vol.
XX. p. 310. The .value of Bradley's observations may be estimated from the labor
bestowed upon their reduction by Bessel as late as 1818, in his "fundamenta astro-
nomic pro anno MDCCLV, deducta ex observationibus viri incomparabilis James
Bradley."

38

servations, the French astronomers and especially La Place,
with a geometrical skill scarcely if at all inferior to that of its
great author, resumed the whole system of Newton, and
brought every phenomenon observed since his time within its
laws. Difficulties of fact with which he struggled in vain,
gave way to more accurate observations, and problems that
defied the power of his analysis yielded to the modern im-
provements of the calculus.

But there is no ultima Thule in the progress of science.
With the recent augmentations of telescopic power, the de-
tails of the nebular theory proposed by Sir W. HerscheJl
with such courage and ingenuity have been drawn in ques-
tion. Many — most — of those milky patches in which he
beheld what he regarded as cosmical matter, as yet in an
unformed state, — the rudimental material of worlds not yet
condensed, — have been resolved into stars, as bright and
distinct as any in the firmament. I well recall the glow of
satisfaction, with which on the 22d of September, 1847, being
then connected with the University at Cambridge, I received
a letter from the venerable director of the observatory there,
beginning with these memorable words : " You will rejoice
with me that the great nebula in Orion has yielded to the
powers of our incomparable telescope ! . . . It should be
borne in mind, that this nebula, and that of Andromeda
[which has been also resolved at Cambridge] are the last
strongholds of the nebular theory.* "

But if some of the adventurous speculations built by Sir
William Herschell on the bewildering revelations of his tele-
scope have been since questioned, the vast progress which has
been made in sidereal astronomy, (to which, as I understand,
the Dudley Observatory will be particularly devoted,) the dis-
covery of the parallax of the fixed stars, the investigation of
the interior relations of binary and triple systems of stars, the

* Annals of the Observatory of Harvard College, p. cxxi.

39

theories for the explanation of the extraordinary, not to say-
fantastic, shapes discerned in some of the nebulous systems,
— whirls and spirals radiating through spaces as vast as the
orbit of Neptune,* — the glimpses at systems beyond that to
which our sun belongs, — these are all splendid results, which
may fairly be attributed to the school of Herschell, and will
for ever insure no secondary place to that name in the annals
of science.f

In the remarks which I have hitherto made, T have had
mainly in view the direct connection of .astronomical science
with the uses of life and the service of man. But a generous
philosophy contemplates the subject in higher relations. It
is a remark as old at least as Plato, and is repeated from him
more than once by Cicero, that all the liberal arts have a com-
mon bond and relationship^ The different sciences contem-
plate as their immediate object the different departments of
animate and inanimate nature ; but this great system itself is
but one. Its various parts are so interwoven with each other,
that the most extraordinary relations and unexpected analogies
are constantly presenting themselves ; and arts and sciences
seemingly the least connected, render to each other the most
effective assistance.

The history of electricity, galvanism, and magnetism, fur-
nishes the most striking illustration of this remark. Com-
mencing with the meteorological phenomena of our own
atmosphere, and terminating with the observation of the
remotest heavens, it may well be adduced on an occasion like
the present. Franklin demonstrated the identity of lightning
and the electric fluid. This discovery gave a great impulse

* See the remarkable memoir of Professor Alexander, "on the origin of the
forms and the present condition of some of the clusters of stars, and several of the
Nebula?." — Gould's Astronomical Journal, Vol. III. p. 95.

t For an analysis of the progressive Views of Sir W. Herschell on the Sidereal
system, see Etudes d' Astronomie Stdlaire, par F. G. W. Struve, pp. 23-44.

X Archias, § 1 ; de Oratore, Lib. III. § 21.

40

to electrical research, with little else in view but the means of
protection from the thundercloud. A purely accidental cir-
cumstance led the physician Galvani at Bologna to trace the
mysterious element, under conditions entirely novel both of
development and application. In this new form, it became,
in the hands of Davy, the instrument of the most extraordi-
nary chemical operations ; and earths and alkalis, touched by
the creative wire, started up into metals that float on water,
and kindle in the air. At a later period, the closest affinities
are observed between electricity and magnetism, on the one
hand; while on the other, the relations of polarity are de-
tected between acids and alkalis. — Plating and gilding hence-
forth become electrical processes. In the last applications of
the same subtle medium, it has become the messenger of
intelligence across the land and beneath the sea ; and is now
employed by the astronomer to ascertain the difference of
longitudes, to transfer the beats of the clock from one station
to another, and to record the moment of his observations with
automatic accuracy. How large a share has been borne by
America in these magnificent discoveries and applications,
among the most brilliant achievements of modern science,
will sufficiently appear from the repetition of the names of
Franklin, Henry, Morse, Walker, Mitchell, Lock, and Bond.

It has sometimes happened, whether from the harmonious
relations to each other of the different departments of science,
or from rare felicity of individual genius, that the most ex-
traordinary intellectual versatility has been manifested by the
same person. Although Newton's transcendent talent did not
blaze out in childhood, yet as a boy he discovered great apti-
tude for mechanical contrivance. His water-clock, self-moving
vehicle, and mill, were the wonder of the village ; the latter
propelled by a living mouse. Sir David Brewster represents
the accounts as differing, whether the mouse was made to
advance " by a string attached to its tail," or by " its unavail-
ing attempts to reach a portion of corn placed above the

41

wheel." It seems more reasonable to conclude that the youth-
ful discoverer of the law of gravitation intended, by the com-
bination of these opposite attractions, to produce a balanced
movement. It is consoling to the average mediocrity of the
race to perceive in these sportive essays, that the mind of
Newton passed through the stage of boyhood. But emerging
from boyhood, what a bound it made as from earth to heaven!
Soon after commencing Bachelor of arts, at the age of twenty-
four, he untwisted the golden and silver threads of the solar
spectrum ; simultaneously, or soon after, conceived the method
of fluxions ; and arrived at the elemental idea of universal
gravity, before he had passed to his Master's degree.* Master
of arts, indeed ! That degree, if no other, was well bestowed.
Universities are unjustly accused of fixing science in stereo-
type. That diploma is enough of itself to redeem the honors
of academical parchment from centuries of learned dulness
and scholastic dogmatism.

But the great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and
purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations,
and to furnish a refined pleasure. Considering this as the
ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim pre-
cedence of astronomy. No other science furnishes such a
palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the
foundation of our intellectual system ; the great ideas of time,
and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and
motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages
on ages required for several of the secular equations of the
solar system ; of distances from which the light of a fixed
star would not reach us in twenty millions of years ; f of
magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a football ;
of starry hosts, suns like our own, numberless as the sands
on the shore ; of worlds and systems shooting through the

* Sir David Brewster's Life of Newton, chapter III.
t NichoPs Architecture of the Heavens, p. 160.
6

42

infinite spaces, with a velocity compared with which the can-
non-ball is a way-worn, heavy-paced traveller !

Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for
elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they pre-
sent even to the unaided sight scenes of glory which words
are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a few weeks since,
to take the early train from Providence to Boston ; and for
this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Every thing
around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken
only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and
rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night,
— the sky was without a cloud, — the winds were whist.
The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the
stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her
presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day ;
the Pleiades just above the horizon shed their sweet influ-
ence in the east ; Lyra sparkled near the zenith ; Andromeda
veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in
the south ; the steady pointers far beneath the pole looked
meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign.

Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As
we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more
perceptible ; the intense blue of the sky began to soften ; the
smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest ; the sister-
beams of the Pleiades soon melted together ; but the bright
constellations of the west and north remained unchanged.
Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of
angels hidden from mortal eyes shifted the scenery of the
heavens ; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the
dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray ; the great
watch-stars shut up their holy eyes ; the east began to kindle.
Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky ; the
whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of
the morning light, which came pouring down from above in
one great ocean of radiance ; till at length, as we reached the

43

Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the
horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf
into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting
gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of
day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began
his state.

I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians,
who in the morning of the world went up to the hill-tops of
Central Asia, and ignorant of the true God, adored the most
glorious work of his hand. But I am filled with amazement,
when I am told that in this enlightened age, and in the heart
of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness
this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the
Creator, and yet say in their hearts, " there is no God."

Numerous as are the heavenly bodies visible to the naked
eye, and glorious as are their manifestations, it is probable
that in our own system there are great numbers as yet undis-
covered. Just two hundred years ago this year, Huyghens
announced the discovery of one satellite of Saturn, and ex-
pressed the opinion that the six planets and six satellites then
known, and making up the perfect number of twelve, com-
posed the whole of our planetary system.* In 1729, an astro-
nomical writer came to the conclusion that there might be
other bodies in our system, but that the limit of telescopic
power had been reached, and no further discoveries were
likely to be made.f The orbit of one comet only had been
definitively calculated. Since that time the power of the
telescope has been indefinitely increased ; — two primary plan-
ets of the first class, ten satellites,^ and forty-three small
planets revolving between Mars and Jupiter have been dis-

* Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Series, Vol.
III. p. 282.

t Admiral Smyth's Celestial Cycle, Yol. I. p. 198.

X This computation of the number of satellites discovered since 1729 assumes six
as the number of those of Uranus. See J. R. Hind's Solar System, p. 175.

44

covered, the orbits of six or seven hundred comets, some of
brief period, have been ascertained; — and it has been com-
puted that hundreds of thousands of these mysterious bodies
wander through our system. There is no reason to think that
all the primary planets, which revolve about the sun, have
been discovered. An indefinite increase in the number of
asteroids may be anticipated ; while outside of Neptune,
between our sun and the nearest fixed star, supposing the
attraction of the sun to prevail through half the distance,
there is room for ten more primary planets, succeeding each
other at distances increasing in a geometrical ratio. The first
of these will unquestionably be discovered as soon as the per-
turbations of Neptune shall have been accurately observed ;
— and with maps of the heavens, on which the smallest tele-
scopic stars are laid down, any one of them may be dis-
covered much sooner.*

But it is when we turn our observation and our thoughts
from our own system, to the systems which lie beyond it in
the heavenly spaces, that we approach a more adequate con-
ception of the vastness of Creation. All analogy teaches us
that the sun which gives light to us is but one of those count-
less stellar fires which deck the firmament, and that every
glittering star in that shining host is the centre of a system,
as vast and as full of subordinate luminaries as our own. Of
these suns, — centres of planetary systems, — thousands are
visible to the naked eye, millions are discovered by the tele-
scope. Sir John Herschell, in the account of his operations
at the Cape of Good Hope,f calculates that about five and
a half millions of stars are visible enough to be distinctly
counted in a twenty foot reflector in both hemispheres. He
adds that " the actual number is much greater, there can be

* Leverrier, Compte Rendu, 5th Oct. 1846, p. 659. Proceedings of American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. I. p. 178.

t Results of Astronomical Observations made during the years 1834-8, at the
Cape of Good Hope, p. 381.

45

little doubt." His illustrious father estimated on one occa-
sion that 125,000 stars passed through the field of his forty
foot reflector in a quarter of an hour. This would give
12,000,000 for the entire circuit of the heavens, in a single
telescopic zone ; and this estimate was made under the as-
sumption that the nebulae were masses of luminous matter
not yet condensed into suns.

These stupendous calculations, however, form but the first
column of the inventory of the universe. Faint white specks
are visible even to the naked eye of a practised observer
in different parts of the heavens. Under high magnifying
powers, several thousands of such spots are visible, — no
longer, however, faint white specks, but many of them re-
solved by powerful telescopes into vast aggregations of stars,
each of which may with propriety be compared with the
milky way of our system. Many of these nebulae, however,
resisted the power of Sir Wm. Herschell's great reflector, and
were accordingly still regarded by him as masses of unformed
luminous matter. This, till a few years since, was perhaps
the prevailing opinion, — and the nebular theory filled a large
space in modern astronomical science. But with the increase
of instrumental power, especially under the mighty grasp of
Lord Rosse's gigantic reflector and the great refractors at Pul-
kova and Cambridge, the most irresolvable of these nebulae
have given way ; and the better opinion now is, that every
one of them is a galaxy, like our own milky way, composed
of millions of suns. In other words, we are brought to. the
bewildering conclusion, that thousands of these misty specks,
the greater part of them too faint to be seen by the naked
eye, are, not each a universe like our solar system, but each
a "swarm" of universes of unappreciable magnitude.* The
mind sinks overpowered by the contemplation. We repeat

* Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 44, Otte's Translation.

46

the words, but they no longer convey distinct ideas to the
understanding.

But these conclusions, however vast their comprehension,
carry us but another step forward in the realms of sidereal
astronomy. A proper motion in space of our sun and of the
fixed stars, as we call them, has long been believed to exist.
Their vast distances only prevent its being more apparent.
The great improvement, which has taken place in instru-
ments of measurement within the last generation, has not
only established the existence of this motion, but has pointed
to the region in the starry vault, around which our whole
solar and stellar system, with its myriad of attendant planet-
ary worlds, appears to be performing a mighty revolution.
If, then, we assume that outside of the system to which we
belong, and in which our sun is but a star like Aldebaran or
Sirius, the different nebulae of which we have spoken, thou-
sands of which spot the heavens, constitute each a distinct
family of universes, we must, following the guide of analogy,
attribute to each of them also, beyond all the revolutions of
their individual attendant planetary systems, a great revolu-
tion, comprehending the whole ; while the same course of
analogical reasoning would lead us still further onward, and
in the last analysis, require us to assume a transcendental
connection between all these mighty systems, — a universe of
universes, circling round in the infinity of space, and preserv-
ing its equilibrium by the same laws of mutual attraction,
which bind the lower worlds together.*

It may be thought that conceptions like these are calcu-
lated rather to depress than to elevate us in the scale of
being ; that banished as he is by these contemplations to a
corner of creation, and there reduced to an atom, man sinks

* For popular views of the present state of science in the department of sidereal
astronomy, see Sir John Herschell's Outlines, Part III. ; Himmelskunde volksfass-
lich bearbeitet von M. A. Stern, pp. 258-319; and Etudes d' astronomie Stellaire,
par F. G. W. Struve.

47

to nothingness in this infinity of worlds. But a second
thought corrects the impression. These vast contemplations
are well calculated to inspire awe, but not abasement. Mind
and matter are incommensurable. An immortal soul, even
while clothed in " this muddy vesture of decay," is in the eye
of God and reason, a purer essence than the brightest sun
that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human eye,
instinct with life and spirit, which, gazing through the tele-
scope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's
sword, and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours,
stands higher in the order of being than all that host of lumi-
naries. The intellect of Newton, which discovered the law
that holds the revolving worlds together, is a nobler work of
God than a universe of universes of unthinking matter.

If still treading the loftiest paths of analogy, we adopt the
supposition, — to me I own the grateful supposition, — that
the countless planetary worlds which attend these countless
suns, are the abodes of rational beings like man, instead of
bringing back from this exalted conception a feeling of insig-
nificance, as if the individuals of our race were but poor
atoms in the infinity of being, I regard it, on the contrary,
as a glory of our human nature, that it belongs to a family
which no man can number of rational natures like itself. In
the order of being they may stand beneath us, or they may
stand above us ; he may well be content with his place who
is made " a little lower than the angels." *

Finally, my friends, I believe there is no contemplation
better adapted to awaken devout ideas than that of the
heavenly bodies ; no branch of natural science which bears
clearer testimony to the power and wisdom of God, than that
to which you this day consecrate a temple. The heart of the

*■ For some interesting views of the controversy which had its origin in the inge-
nious Essay " of the Plurality of Worlds," see Professor Baden Powell's "Essays
on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy
of Creation."

48

ancient world, with all the prevailing ignorance of the true
nature and motions of the heavenly orbs, was religiously
impressed by their survey. There is a passage in one of
those admirable philosophical treatises of Cicero, composed in
the decline of life, as a solace under domestic bereavement
and patriotic concern at the impending convulsions of the
State, in which, quoting from some lost work of Aristotle, he
treats the topic in a manner which almost puts to shame the
teachings of Christian wisdom : —

" Praeclare ergo Aristo teles, ' si essent,' inquit, qui sub
terra semper habitavissent, bonis et illustribus domiciliis quae
essent ornata signis atque pictaris, instructaque rebus iis
omnibus, quibus abundant ii qui beati putantur, nee tamen
exissent unquam supra terram ; accepissent autem fama et
auditione, esse quoddam numen et vim Deorum ; deinde ali-
quo tempore, patefactis terras faucibus, ex illis abditis sedibus
evadere in haec loca quae nos incolimus, atque exire potuis-
sent ; cum repente, terram, et maria, coelumque vidissent ;
nubium magnitudinem, ventorumque vim cognovissent, as-
pexissentque solem, ejusque turn magnitudinem pulchritudi-
nemque, turn etiam efficientiam cognovissent, quod is diem
efficeret, toto ccelo luce diffusa ; cum autem terras nox opa-
casset, turn caelum totum cernerent astris distinctum et
ornatum, lunaeque luminum varietatem turn crescentis turn
senescentis, eorumque omnium ortus et occasus, atque in
aeternitate ratos immutabilesque cursus ; haec cum viderent,
profecto et esse Deos, et haec tanta opera Deorum esse arbi-
trarentur." *

" Nobly does Aristotle observe, that if there were beings
who had always lived under ground, in convenient, nay, mag-
nificent dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and
every thing which belongs to prosperous life, but who had
never come above ground, — who had heard, however, by

* Cicero de Natura Deorum, Lib. II. § 30.

• 49

fame and report, of the being and power of the gods, — if at
a certain time, the portals of the earth being thrown open,
they had been able to emerge from those hidden abodes to
the regions inhabited by us ; when suddenly they had seen
the earth, the seas, and the sky ; had perceived the vastness
of the clouds and the force of the winds ; had contemplated
the sun, his magnitude and his beauty, and still more his
effectual power, that it is he who makes the day by the diffu-
sion of his light through the whole sky ; and when night had
darkened the earth, should then behold the whole heavens
studded and adorned with stars, and the various lights of the
waxing and waning moon, the risings and the settings of all
these heavenly bodies, and their courses fixed and immutable
in all eternity ; when, I say, they should see these things,
truly they would believe that there are gods, and that these,
so great things, are their works."

There is much by day to engage the attention of the
observatory ; the sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions,
the spots on his disc, (to us the faint indications of move-
ments of unimagined grandeur in his luminous atmosphere,)
a solar eclipse, a transit of the inferior planets, the mysteries
of the spectrum ; all phenomena of vast importance and
interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time ; he
goes to his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its
rest. A dark pall spreads over the resorts of active life ; ter-
restrial objects, hill and valley, and rock and stream, and the
abodes of men disappear ; but the curtain is drawn up which
concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine and there
they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton
and Galileo, of Keppler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hip-
parchus ; yea, as they moved and shone when the morning
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
All has changed on earth ; but the glorious heavens remain
unchanged. The plough passes over the site of mighty cities,
the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages

7

S

50

they spoke are forgotten ; but the stars that shone for them
are shining for us ; the same eclipses run their steady cycle ;
the same equinoxes call out the flowers of spring and send
the husbandman to the harvest; the sun pauses at either
tropic as he did when his course began ; and sun and moon,
and planet and satellite, and star and constellation and
galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom, and the
love which placed them in the heavens, and upholds them
there.

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